Authors: Chuck Dixon
Patting the many cargo pockets on the snow suit revealed more magazines for the automatic but no other weapons beyond a clasp knife.
He stood a moment reviewing options.
The man lay face down. His back was inked with tattoos. They were good but not professional. Prison marks. A pair of dice reading seven on one shoulder. A fleur-de-lis on the other. The largest, a medieval lion icon, stood rampaging on his spine. They were all faded; the ink turned a blueish hue with edges blurred. The lion obscured a long-healed line of sutures. Not Russian. No minarets or crosses or eight-point stars.
Dropping to a crouch he used the rider’s clasp knife to make a deep ‘Y’ incision in the man’s abdomen from the join at the sternum to the mound at the crotch. The bloodless cut bisected a tattoo of a spider spread-legged over the stomach. The incision would allow any gases to escape as the body decomposed. The body would sink and stay down. He used his own belt to bind the corpse’s ankles together. He tied the rider’s boots tight around the ankles with the ends of the laces. Using strips of his own sliced clothing he knotted the wrists together over a full case of Sebago beer empties, twenty-four bottles. The only thing of any weight in the shack. It would help the body sink and hold it down long enough for Ty Grant’s trout to feed on face and fingers.
He tied a longer strip of cloth around the body’s torso and through the handles of the cardboard carry case before lowering the body head first into the hole in the floor. Levon lifted the feet to angle the corpse and drop it into the water. Water slapped the sides of the hole as the boots descended into the black water on the ends of the laces tied to the rider’s ankles. A cascade of bubbles broke the surface; the case of beer bottles filling with water to further reduce the body’s buoyancy.
Levon tossed the bloody gaff into the hole before exiting the shack and trotting to the snow machine that was still puttering on the ice by the first shack.
30
The room looked like something out of a movie about the Caesars. Fluted columns and tiles from floor to a domed ceiling painted with a faux mosaic of water nymphs. Jan Smets found the hiding place using an ultraviolet lamp. It revealed some incongruous fingerprints around the edges of some of the tiles in the center of the floor between the Japanese soaking tub and walk-in shower.
“Time to go to work,” Smets said and adjusted the tartan cap atop his receding hair, turning it around backwards. The tap of a mallet shattered a few of the ceramic tiles, revealing a recessed ring pull beneath. He called for some of the others. They used a sledge to break the tiles all around. A five foot by three foot hatch swung open on piano hinges, exposing the door of a stout steel vault door below.
A custom Mosler. The size of a coffin. Double bit key locks.
“Shit,” Avi said under his breath.
“Thermal lance. Just enough to get inside the works. Make room while I get the tools,” Smets said. He called for a man named Axel to help him.
Avi and Jussi took sledges to the soaking tub and threw the pieces into the walk-in shower. The water was turned off so the pipes were dry when they snapped off. They were finishing when Smets returned with the magnesium rods. Axel carried the heavy fireproof gear folded in his arms.
Koning appeared in the broad arched doorway of the master bath. His one good eye swept the room. The side of his mouth that still worked twisted in a snarl at the sight of the dull steel face of the vault set in the recess.
“This will take hours. We don’t have hours,” Koning said.
“I burn a hole right here between the double locks. Then we see what breed of bitch this is,” Smets said, drawing a rough oval in grease pencil between two brass keyholes set side by side in the façade of the otherwise featureless steel door.
“And if you like what you see?” Koning said.
“If the bitch is a whore then she will open up for me without a fight. I have the tools to work the tumblers. A matter of moments.” Smets shrugged.
“And the burn?”
“An hour to do it right,
chef
.”
“And if the bitch is a nun with a cunt like the bank of England?” Avi asked with a scowl that reddened the scar tissue that ran from the corner of his mouth to his throat.
“We haul her out and take her through the ass.” Smets wrinkled his nose and raised the cap to wipe away sweat on his sleeve.
All laughed but Koning.
“We’ll need Visser. He has the muscle,” he said and turned to go.
31
The crew was Belgian.
The language was Flemish. He knew that much from the few words he could pick out. It was mixed with some phrases in Dutch depending on the speaker. He counted three distinct voices.
Questions came over the radio for someone named Visser. The voice asking the questions became more impatient when no reply came. Visser was unresponsive. He was missing. Visser was the man lying on the bottom of the lake.
Levon keyed the mike after each question for the missing man. Squelches on the other end would tell them that their man was still out there and having radio trouble. The questions stopped coming after a while. The crosstalk dissolved into occasional exchanges. Then the earbud went silent.
That meant the crew no longer needed their radios to communicate.
They were all in one place.
Levon gunned the snow machine and leaned low over the control bar. Snow stung his face. His field of vision was filled with flakes streaking toward his eyes like comets out of the black night. He could continue over the lake and roll right up on them. They had no reason to believe he wasn’t their man Visser.
He had no real idea of their number. He wasn’t armed. That plan wasn’t going to work.
There was an M4 rifle with a thousand rounds of ammo locked in a gun safe back at his place. There was a Colt 1911 with four magazines secured under the seat of the Ram. Getting at either weapon would take him further from the Fenton house. He had no idea of the situation that lay ahead of him or what kind of threat Merry was under. Time was the primary factor here. He needed to be among the strangers with as much force, and in as little time, as he could manage.
He turned the snow machine hard right as he neared the opposite shore of the lake. All of the houses were dark except for a nascent glow from within one building close to the water.
It was a sprawling house in a faux chalet style that was considered by everyone Levon met to be the ugliest home on Mohawk Road. It was the largest home on the lake. Danni Fenton called it “an architectural abortion.” The Fentons’ cabin was just behind it on the slope. There was much speculation about the owners. They hadn’t visited the place in years. Or ever, as far as anyone knew. Their absence fueled rumors. They were drug dealers. The owner was a porno king. It was owned by a famous Hollywood couple and the home was trapped in divorce limbo.
Someone paid the property tax. Someone kept the home association membership up to date. And now armed strangers came to break in. It wasn’t just a random burglary on a remote home. The crew shut down the electric and phone services. They spread out to lock down all the residents. And they had advance intelligence on who was living here. They needed time to do what they’d come to do. They established a secure area of operations just as a military unit would. They’d be here until daybreak at the very least.
The crew, some of them anyway, were former military. Their leader was a soldier for certain. That meant they’d act like a military unit. That meant Levon could predict some of their routine. He had an idea how they would react in most scenarios.
The snow machine clawed up a drift, sinking into the fresh snowfall until it found the solid ground that led up the slope to the roadway. Levon hooked a left onto Mohawk Road and drove straight for the Fenton’s cabin. The crew in the big house would hear the engine roaring past. They’d think it was their man. That bought him time.
The earbud came to life again. They heard him pass. There were angry calls for Visser to answer them. He pulled the bud from his ear. The voices continued to call, tinny now, from the tiny speaker bobbing on his shoulder.
The Fentons’ kitchen and family room showed signs of a violent struggle. Danni and the kids had fought being taken. Levon scanned the room, looking for blood traces and found none. It was abduction not murder. For now.
In the master bedroom he pulled the canvas case from the closet. He pulled the SKS rifle out and examined it. It was oiled and maintained. He slid the action back to open the bolt. The interior was shiny slick. The action moved easy without being loose. It would do.
On the floor of the closet was a plastic ammo box full of stripper clips of ten 7.62 rounds. The bottleneck rounds were steel cased but he could see no signs of corrosion. Levon shoved handfuls of clips into the pocket of the snow suit. Three clips in either slit pocket on his torso. Four more in each cargo pocket on his legs. He fixed a clip in the top of the open action of the rifle and pushed it home with the heel of his hand. The bolt slammed tight with a clank. He drew it back again to plant a round in the chamber.
Somewhere in the house a door banged open. A floor board complained under the tread of a boot.
“
Visser? Wat doe je hier, lul? Koning is boos op je, Visser
.”
The voice was coming closer.
32
As she rounded each turn Merry looked back to see if the woman following her was in sight. The span of road behind was empty each time. The woman had fallen back for some reason.
Merry and her father had traveled this road more times than she could remember. In good weather they made at least two trips a week down to the market for one thing or another. She wished that she’d paid more attention to the drive. But it was only a ten minute or so ride from the market to their house. It was over so quick. Just another country two-lane.
She thought that the road straightened after the next curve for a long run down to the county road. As she skidded out of the concave turn she saw that she was wrong. The road turned in a gradual bow on a downward slope into the shadowless dark. Merry dug in with the poles and pushed off to take advantage of the downhill run. Her shoulders burned now as well as her thighs.
The robe was getting heavier with snow melting into the wool. It made her arms feel like lead. She wanted to take the robe off. She knew that was wrong. Daddy told her once, when the weather got colder than she was ever used to down in Alabama, that wool will keep you warm even when it’s wet.
“That’s why sheep don’t stand under trees when it rains like cows do,” he told her.
She told him that was funny.
“Then you’ll remember it. Gunny always says that if something is funny you’ll always remember it,” Daddy said.
Daddy also told her once about the Wall of Pain. It was something athletes and soldiers faced. It was your body telling you to quit. Your brain telling you that you were pushing too hard. Your muscles screaming for you to stop. He told her that the wall wasn’t really a wall. It was a gateway. And once you were through it the pain melted away and your muscles flooded with blood and your brain with a chemical that made you feel like it was your birthday and Christmas all in one. All you had to do was push for that gate to a world of euphoria on the other side.
Merry dug and pushed for the wall. She only hoped it came soon. She only hoped she reached it before the woman behind her could.
The gradual curve bottomed out into the long flat stretch of road she recalled. Maybe it was the knowledge that her goal was close or maybe she passed through the gateway of pain, her legs and arms felt lighter. Merry dropped into an easy rhythm, making good time through the trees that were sending sprays of mist down on her from branches whipped by the high gusts howling above.
Beyond enclosing ramparts of pine and elder ahead there was a glow. A dawn light that grew in intensity as she pushed and pulled, pushed and pulled. It was the pole lights outside the market. As she poled along the glow turned the branches and boles of the trees black before her.
Merry turned her head to look back the way she’d come. A tiny shape was visible against the white surface of the roadway. The woman was just coming off the apron of the curve onto the straight run. She had either fallen behind or Merry was the better on skis or, perhaps, the Wall of Pain was too much for her pursuer to get over.
Merry kicked a leg out at the end of the straight run and made the herringbone turn onto the broader span of the county road. Violent gusts tore down the north-south run of the road making snow devils over the washboard surface carved out by the wind.
The going was tougher here out of the cover of the trees. She bent into the squall, lifting her feet so the skis could clear the marching drifts. Merry leaned on the poles for support. The wind was racing down the county road like it was fed into a funnel and she fighting her way up in the barrel. Icy pellets the size of BBs slapped her cheeks raw. She turned her face away.
Her pace slowed to a crawl. Head lowered, she looked up from under her brows. The pole lamps shuddered and waggled in the wind. Their twin glows were cast through the loops of hanging electrical wires throwing a quivering lace of shadows over the road.
Merry bent to undo the latches on the skis and pull her boots free. As she hoped and prayed, the snow on the road was a layer of soft powder over hard pack. She could make better time at an open run, hopping the high drifts. She was soon under the joined pools of light from the lamps dancing atop the swaying poles. Merry raced past the gas pump for the front door of the market. She turned as she did so to see a dark shape against the greater gloom out on the roadway.